Triangle preparing for Hopscotch Music Festival

9 to 5? Meet 9 to 3 — as in 3 o’clock in the morning. The minds behind The Independent Weekly’s new music festival in downtown Raleigh didn’t know what they were getting themselves into when they started building the 120-band bill from the bottom up. But if they manage to pull Hopscotch off, it stands to leave an indelible impact on the Triangle’s music scene.

“It’s a nightmare,” Independent marketing and festival director Greg Lowenhagen said. “A really fun nightmare.”

2010 promises to be a watershed year for music in North Carolina. With the arrival of Hopscotch this month and Asheville’s Moogfest in October, the state has two huge first-year festivals on the horizon.

“It’s really well positioned — if we do it right — to create a unique niche in the Southeast,” Lowenhagen said. “Not just in Raleigh, not just in the Triangle, not just in North Carolina — but really something that can attract people from Charleston, Columbia, DC and Richmond and Asheville.”

For Lowenhagen, devising Hopscotch was the next logical step in an area that seems to beg for a larger festival.

“I felt that the city was ready,” Lowenhagen said. “There’s a vibrant scene, there’s a lot of young people and a lot of great established music venues.”

After pitching the idea of a multi-day festival in various bars and venues in Raleigh to The Independent’s receptive owners, the next step was to come up with a diverse lineup. Lowenhagen allocated the responsibility to the publication’s music editor, Grayson Currin.

“Greg gave me the best edict you can get,” Currin said. “’Draft the fantasy list of bands you’d like to have at a festival.’”

Currin’s list has seen a few changes from when he began drafting his dream team.

“Four of them died,” he said. “That’s how long we’ve been planning this festival — four people that were on the original list have since died.”

Building an attractive lineup is an arduous task in itself, made even more difficult by the fact that Hopscotch hasn’t had the chance to establish a track record yet.

“Very few bands are just going to jump on board with something that’s brand new,” Lowenhagen said. “There are a lot of bad promoters out there, a lot of people that fold, people that don’t pay — everyone’s skeptical.”

Combating the incredulous is personal friend of Currin and Lowenhagen, Paul Siler, guitarist for Birds of Avalon. Siler’s foundation in local music and his multitude of industry friends helped the team score Chicago post-rockers Tortoise. The band’s commitment soon became the tipping point for other bands on the fence, Currin said.
“You start to add a band like Tortoise to a roster and then you get some of these up and coming bands like Washed Out,” Lowenhagen said. “And your list at the end of your e-mail starts to grow.”
“Pretty soon, the roster starts to sell itself.”
One of the biggest challenges of building a bill is balance. Festivals need a sizeable turnout to remain economically viable and a line-up of unknown bands isn’t guaranteed to pack a club.
“I’m personally a huge fan of a lot of experimental, weird music,” Currin said. “Noise, drone, improvisation — for a first- year festival, incorporating that kind of stuff is risky. It’s not New York. It’s not Brooklyn.”
It’s a risk the Hopscotch team is willing to take.
Fostering the fringe is an across-the-board fusion of national and local: Public Enemy shares a bill with The Love Language while Vitamin Water sponsors alongside Schoolkids Records.
Big acts proliferate exposure and the idea is that someone visiting the area for the first time will have their interest galvanized in what the Triangle has to offer, Currin said.
Where Moogfest is backed by the music promotion giant AC Entertainment, Hopscotch remains in the hands of Lowenhagen, Currin and only a handful of dedicated Independent employees and interns.
Tasks that would normally be delegated to teams and task forces, like answering general information e-mails or making sure the right streets are closed off, are left almost entirely to Lowenhagen and Currin.
“It comes down to details like our official coffee sponsor, Larry’s Beans — we have to make sure their creamer passes state code to be at the right temperature for service in the City Plaza,” Lowenhagen said. “Meanwhile, what you’re really concerned about is whether Broken Social Scene has the appropriate backstage setup they need.”
It doesn’t leave much room for a personal life. The Independent has given Lowenhagen a month off from his normal job as marketing director to focus on Hopscotch, but the workload has only increased ­­­— Lowenhagen barely had time to catch dinner with his mother on her birthday.
For Currin, the ends justify the means.
“It’s like, ‘Wow, this is a lot of phone calls and e-mailing and making sure these details are in place and checking back with this person about this detail and going back to this person,’” Currin said.
“But at the end of it, you’re just like, ‘Oh shit. This is going to be so fun.’ That’s kind of the ethos of the whole thing.”

Contact the Diversions Editor at dive@unc.edu.